Bloomberg Welcomes Big Container of a Different Variety

New trash receptacles planned for Times Square will hold about five times more garbage than the city’s traditional sidewalk cans.Credit
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Perhaps Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not notice the Coca-Cola supersign at his back, shimmering in Times Square’s late morning cold on Friday.

Maybe he missed some of the visitors passing by, their cups still large and still brimming with soda and sweetened coffee, which they sipped, perhaps tauntingly, as he spoke.

But four days after a state judge halted the mayor’s plans to limit large sugary drinks, Mr. Bloomberg visited possibly the city’s most saccharine neighborhood with a tangential message: The cups may not be shrinking, but would New Yorkers mind tossing them in a super-engineered trash can?

The city announced plans on Friday to install in Times Square 30 trash and recycling stations that can compact waste using solar energy and then send wireless signals alerting workers when the bins are full.

“This will work,” Mr. Bloomberg said, speaking at the pedestrian plaza at West 46th Street and Broadway, “just like closing a big part of Broadway to traffic has worked.”

Because of the interior compacting, the new receptacles will be able to hold about five times more garbage than traditional sidewalk bins, Mr. Bloomberg said. Recycling bins for bottles, cans and paper are affixed to the trash unit.

Mr. Bloomberg called the program “the largest public space recycling pilot anywhere in the world.”

John J. Doherty, the city’s sanitation commissioner, noted that about 30 percent of the materials found inside garbage cans in the area were recyclable.

The city also plans to add 1,000 traditional recycling containers on streets in all five boroughs by the end of the year.

The company behind the stations, BigBelly Solar, has installed similar structures in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. Among the images emblazoned onto some of New York’s receptacles: small beverage cans.

Though officials said that Times Square generated more trash than any other city neighborhood — about 15,000 pounds on a typical day — early returns on Friday suggested that the compactors had not yet caught on. Along the pedestrian plaza, the traditional cans proved far more popular, taking on wrappers, bottles and detritus from a nearby hot-dog stand as the new cans remained empty.

Even a performer dressed as Alvin the Chipmunk, doling out hugs and high-fives beside the new bins, could not attract a crowd.

Finally, Jamie Parker, 22, visiting from northern England, stopped to recycle his sports drink bottle. He was drawn to the bins because he has seen similar ones at home, he said. But he had one question: Who was this Bloomberg character he had heard about during his stay?

“I don’t know,” Mr. Parker said. “I guess he’s the mayor?”

A version of this article appears in print on March 16, 2013, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Bloomberg Welcomes Big Container of a Different Variety. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe